"Earth Escape?"
An absurd thought sprouted in Yan Hui's mind, and without thinking, she took a bronze bell from her pouch.
The bell had an antique elegance, its surface gleaming with precious light. It was a genuine Law Artifact, the Corpse-Driving Bell.
Ring, ring, ring!
She shook her wrist and chanted, "Heavenly soldiers suppress baleful intent, the Northern Dipper locks down Yin; enter caves upon meeting mountains, cross bridges upon meeting water; my art issues its command, obey its orders and prohibitions... show yourself at once!"
The ringing was urgent, and the incantation held a mysterious power. So long as that zombie was still nearby, the talismanic command would compel it to obediently hop out.
Yet Yan Hui recited the incantation three times, almost shaking the bronze bell apart, and still there was no movement around her:
"It escaped?"
"Or was this corpse not raised by our household, but an outsider?"
Yan Hui's expression was as dark as still water, her face grim.
Liu Chen had already stripped the black bear spirit's hide, folded it into a bundle, and stood there.
In fact, a Demon Beast's body offered more than valuable fur and hide. Its flesh and bones could also be simmered into soup or used in medicine, providing potent nourishment.
But as a disciple of the Zhongnan Sword Sect, he held himself above such things on account of his background and left the black bear spirit's flesh and blood to the Yan Household's people.
Watching Yan Hui silently sulk, Liu Chen felt an ache for her and thought, Although Senior Sister has already gained admission to the sword sect's lower court, she still cares so deeply for her clan and family, rushing about over household affairs, even at the cost of delaying her cultivation. She truly is a good woman who values affection and loyalty.
Yan Hui walked out of the woods and began issuing orders, telling the Demon-Slaying Alliance members and the Yan Household's disciples to press their advantage and clear out all the Demon Beasts in the mountains. In particular, they were to watch for a white-faced demon monkey and capture it alive if they found it.
She could not forget the Slay Evil Sword and hoped to recover it.
The sword could not bear the light of day, certainly, but as long as she found it, there would be a way to give it a legitimate provenance.
The crucial point was that no one else in the sect knew Su Zhen had come to the Yan Household Great Stronghold. Everything had been done cleanly.
Liu Chen was different. She could not kill him.
But that did not matter. She would cast out a long bait and keep fishing slowly; sooner or later, he would take the hook.
Thinking this, she gave Liu Chen a radiant smile.
Seeing her, a beauty beneath the moon, Liu Chen could not help feeling his heart sway and his spirit drift. What he liked was precisely his senior sister's alluring beauty, mature yet tinged with wildness.
After that smile, Yan Hui turned and returned to the stronghold, passed through row upon row of houses, and descended a long, dark flight of steps.
She continued downward until she reached the square stone chamber. Facing the enormous black coffin, she asked directly, "Great-Uncle, did something happen up on the cliff?"
"You know?"
"I encountered a strange zombie..."
Yan Hui recounted everything that had happened, exactly as it had occurred.
"Mr. Corpse?"
After hearing her out, her great-uncle's tone grew surprised. "Why does this sound like a different matter?"
He immediately told her that the wooden coffin numbered 303 had been found empty.
Yan Hui grew anxious at once. "Impossible! Absolutely impossible!"
Her great-uncle sighed. "But it has already happened. Yan Ji and the others have vanished, their whereabouts unknown. I've already had Ninth and the others send people out to search everywhere, but there has been no news so far."
Yan Hui said dazedly, "But how could a White Zombie like that lift its coffin lid and run away?"
"Exactly. Even after turning it over a hundred times, I still cannot understand it, and it had to be that particular one. Could word have leaked out, and someone stolen it?"
"Even more impossible! If anyone had discovered it, our Yan Household would have been razed to the ground long ago and ceased to exist."
Yan Hui's tone was as decisive as a blade cleaving nails and iron.
She had made herself part of the game, luring fellow lower-court disciples to the Yan Household Great Stronghold, then scheming to murder them and refine them into zombies.
Such conduct and methods were simply horrifying to hear of.
Meticulous in her thinking, Yan Hui had carefully selected her targets from fellow lower-court disciples who preferred to act alone and languished in frustration. That way, even if they disappeared, it would not attract the sword sect's attention.
After all, as lower-court disciples, they had far less presence, and they often went out, whether to carry out missions, visit family back home, or seek fortuitous opportunities elsewhere.
During those travels, unexpected mishaps inevitably brought the danger of death. If they died somewhere unknown, their deaths became unsolved mysteries without a lead. Even the Zhongnan Sword Sect, a great sect of the profound path, could not mobilize its forces just to find a lower-court disciple.
That gave Yan Hui a loophole to exploit.
And her reason for taking such a desperate risk was simple:
Zombies were not so easy to refine. Merely gathering a few corpses would not get the job done.
The principle was simple. If zombies were regarded as implements, then the quality of those implements was directly related to the quality of their materials.
Ordinary mortals, even if they had suffered exploitation and oppression in life, even if they died filled with rage and resentment, left corpses unfit for use-loose and limp, soon returning dust to dust and earth to earth.
Cultivators' corpses were very different. With cultivation in their bodies, tempered through a thousand hammerings and a hundred refinings, they were inherently excellent materials for corpse refinement.
The higher their cultivation, the better their quality.
Of course, the difficulty of obtaining and refining them also increased.
Thus, Yan Hui had set her sights on her fellow disciples.
Her admission to the Zhongnan Sword Sect's lower court seemed like a bird soaring onto a branch to become a phoenix, with a future bright as brocade, but in truth, her Dao Path had already reached its end.
For longevity, for everlasting youth, she could only take the path of corpse nurturing.
Or rather, she had gone to such lengths to enter the Zhongnan Sword Sect's lower court precisely to find a body best suited to becoming her lifebound corpse.
The Yan Household possessed an ancient inheritance. As long as one nurtured a lifebound corpse, then dined with the corpse and lived in symbiosis with it, one could live forever without aging.
Because zombies did not die.
But nurturing a lifebound corpse was never easy. She had to make several preparations, so she needed to obtain a couple more bodies as materials.
Now, hearing that a corpse she had acquired with such difficulty and nurtured for nearly three years had vanished into thin air, how could Yan Hui not feel anxious and furious?
She immediately made to go to Corpse-Nurturing Cliff and see what had happened.
"Girl."
Her great-uncle called her back. "When things stray from the norm, something sinister must be at work. At a time like this, you must be all the calmer, lest a slip invite a catastrophe that drowns us all."
Those words brought Yan Hui to her senses, and she quickly calmed herself.
Compared with the Zhongnan Sword Sect, the tiny Yan Household was truly no more than an ant. One thing was certain: the sword sect had not discovered anything, so the situation could still be kept under control.
The most urgent task was to locate that White Zombie and bring it back.
Come to think of it, after escaping, the White Zombie might also have been killed by the Demon Beasts in the mountains.
The mountain terrain was complex, its conditions ever-changing and full of uncertainties.
Fortunately, the so-called Demon-Ghost Alliance had already been routed beyond any semblance of an army. Its leading Demon Beasts had all been slain, and the rest posed little threat, allowing the stronghold's disciples to enter the mountains and conduct a sweeping search.
Lastly, just what sort of being was that Mr. Corpse?
Did he have anything to do with that White Zombie?
She truly could not make sense of it...
Her great-uncle let out a long, quiet sigh and added, "Winter has already come. That batch of zombies on the cliff should have had their corpse nature nurtured sufficiently by now. It is time to bring them back into the stronghold."
Yan Hui understood what her great-uncle meant. He feared more branches growing out of the knot, giving rise to further mishaps, so she replied, "I know what to do."
With that, she walked out.